Friday, February 10, 2012

Re-Elect Two step

Reposted from my Jita Park candidacy thread

Over the last year, I have been one of the hardest working members of CSM 6 (Trebor says so here). My main focus has been on representing wormhole residents, but I also have been contributing to discussions on topics like ship balancing, microtransactions and all the rest of the topics we discuss with CCP (see this wiki page)

Accomplishments as a CSM 6 member

While ultimately it is CCP that actually does the work, I did push hard on several specific features and bug fixes. The main one is Corporation Bookmarks. CCP has long wanted to get them done, but I think that continued pressure from me and the other CSM members pushed their priority up significantly. I brought up CPU usage on capital shield transporters, which was fixed in Crucible. I had significant input on POS fuel blocks, POCOs, pods on killmails, the Tier 3 BCs and several other topics.

I also read and respond to all the EVE Mails and conversations I get, and pass on feedback to CCP. I spend a lot of time on the forums, including the EVE official forums, Failheap Challenge, and Kugu (which I requested CCP unblock).

What still needs to be done

Firstly, I haven't gotten everything done yet. While we do have corp bookmarks, POS life is still difficult and we still get our own special "features" (aka bugs) after every patch. For example, we have the wormhole mass bug mentioned in this thread.

Secondly, the talk about the wormhole stabilizer (My blog post on the topic) just goes to prove that folks who live in w-space cannot see having a CSM rep as just a nice to have, but it is an absolute requirement. Without someone to speak up, CCP and other CSMs might ruin everything we have all worked so long and hard for.

Thirdly, this year will really matter. This is the time CCP will be fixing all the broken stuff and starting to look at designs for longer term fixes, and I expect that POSes may show up on that list (later in the year). CCP is doing a ton of ship balancing at long last, and I love having input into that, especially since we certainly fit ships differently in w-space.

Who I am in game

I started playing EVE in 2005. After a brief (2 month) stay in empire, I moved out to 0.0 space, in Tribute as part of the Forsaken Empire alliance. I did a bunch of stuff in 0.0, mostly PvP, but some POS management and industry stuff as well. I stuck with the same corp though a corp merger and a bunch of different alliances, most of which I don't even remember anymore. After a couple of years in 0.0, I basically got bored of 0.0 life and moved back to empire to try my hand at invention, which had just come out. I fairly quickly made a bunch of ISK, but eventually got bored and ended up taking a break from EVE for a year or so.

I came back to EVE shortly after the release of Apocrypha, in 2009. I had heard about the new wormhole content, and it sounded interesting to me. I joined a medium sized (at the time) wormhole corporation named Aperture Harmonics. Fairly soon after joining AHARM, I was made the US timezone director, and did a bunch of recruiting. AHARM was, and still is, a PvP corporation. We run sleeper sites in order to pay for new toys to kill stuff with. About 6 months after joining, I was made CEO, and ran the corp for a few months. Running a wormhole corporation was a lot of fun, but it does tend to burn folks out, and I took a short break from EVE in mid 2010. I came back just before our invasion of CCRES, which was the 2nd largest wormhole corp (behind us), and have been back ever since, though no longer as CEO.

Who I am IRL

My name is Josh Goldshlag, I am 34 years old, and live near Boston, MA. I am a computer programmer in my day job, and have previously worked in the game industry. My hobbies include cooking, photography and making my own maple syrup.

You can find a lot more details in my blog – http://twostep4csm.blogspot.com
I am on twitter as @two_step_eve
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here.

4 comments:

  1. Hey Two Steps o/

    You have my support for this election. I just wanted to know how you intend to gather more votes. If Jester's expectations are correct, you'll need a good three thousand votes or more.

    What steps do you think will be necessary to get a csm position? Reaching the wormhole community might be a challenge considering how isolated we are from each-other.

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    1. Yeah, reaching all of the wormhole community is tough. I do have a lot of contacts, and I will be trying to reach out to as many corps and alliances as possible.

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  2. Two-step, a few names came up repeatedly throughout the mess last summer; one of them was yours. The members of the small WH corp I was a member of also spoke highly of you. This is one area of the game that I really enjoy and, aside from small things like making POSs easier to manage, WHs should be left alone.

    Meanwhile, there are some mechanics that need a lot of attention. Sovreignty, resource distribution, war decs, PVE content, and new player experience to name a few. Any thoughts about these areas of the game?

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    1. I agree that those areas need attention more than wormholes do right now. In general, I don't think the CSM's role is to do game design, so I don't have specific proposals for how to fix them. I can say that CCP is working on several of the things on your list right now for the Summer expansion.

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